


Summoning

by Chauntlucet



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22817314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chauntlucet/pseuds/Chauntlucet
Summary: An exploration of the spell called by Norrell, "the act of a very young,very foolish man," seen through the eyes of each of the beings involved, Envoy, Path, and Handsel
Relationships: Gilbert Norrell & John Uskglass | The Raven King, John Uskglass | The Raven King & King Auberon, Thomas of Dundale & John Uskglass | The Raven King
Comments: 31
Kudos: 8





	1. Envoy

He slipped into the corner at the end of the clearing so quietly that the Shadows that lurked there nearly did not notice him. They lept, as though startled by a candle’s flicker, only to slowly sink back down, watching the boy who seemed not to have noticed amidst the rest of the swirling, twining dance the Darkness and the Flamelight shared through that forest, in air thick with wood-smoke and the scent of wine pressed from Hell’s own vineyards. 

An odd creature, the Shadows thought, as the boy settled himself on the ground. Small, he could have been no more than a young child -- though they had no way of truly _knowing,_ the lives of such little things passing by only a little slower than a the flash of the sun across a jewel. Yet the Shadows had seen small children before, in the houses of the greatest of lords and the meanest of villeins alike. These small ones more often than not feared Night and the Darkness she brought. But in the Daylight? What wild, impetuous things they were, even from the distances the Shadows lurked in! They ran and they laughed, and more often they shouted to one another than aught else. But Here, in _this place_ ? Oh, the shadows thought, oh they could but _imagine._ Here surrounded by the mad laughter of Sidhe-folk, by the impossible steps of their dances, the Shadows could imagine. Surrounded by beings that garbed themselves in animals skins and stardust or swirling robes dyed in Daybreak and Madness and Forlorn Hopes, and who could charm cold-hearted Winter or turn the Rain to their whims, the Shadows could imagine. 

But the boy was not loud or rambunctious, he did not run through the crowds here or try and join in with the dances and the laughter of the Sidhe. And he did not avoid the dark, sticking close to the fire and the warmth and the laughing joy of all of the others. No. He only curled himself up beneath the sheltering arches of a blackberry brier's branches, nibbling on the corner of a filched tart and _watched._ With the curious yet watchful eyes of a bird who at any moment might take wing again, he _watched._

And no one but the shadows knew he was there.

 _“Who are you?”_ They asked him at last, with voices that hissed like the midnight wind through an old oak’s leaves, _“And what magic do you use that none have seen you?”_

The boy blinked, jerking suddenly upright and onto his feet, glancing around wildly, but seeing no one. The startled bird, ready to fly once more.

 _“If we wished to harm you, child,”_ The shadows said, in voices softer than the stillness of a house before any have awoken, _“Then we would have announced you to all gathered here long ago.”_

This gave the boy pause and he hesitated, glancing yet again at the trees and undergrowth surrounding him. “It is not magic.” He finally said, “They only do not notice what they do not wish to see.”

 _“And they do not wish to see you?”_ The shadows asked him.

“No.” The boy said, “They see other things as more fun right now. Perhaps later they will decide that I am more interesting, though.” He shrugged, settling again back on the ground and returning his attention to his half-eaten tart, “That is what they're like, you know.”

There was a pause, in which, if the Shadows had eyes or human form, they might have blinked, _“Who are you?”_ They asked the boy again.

“A slave.” He said. “And who are you?”

 _“We are the Shadows and the Darkness.”_ They replied, _“And none may hide or creep better than us.”_ There was a pause, and something almost...amused? Impressed? _Fond?_ crept into the Shadows’ Voices, _“you have come close, however.”_ they admitted.

“I am not hiding!” He moved so quickly then, he _must_ have lept up. That was the impression left on the air, at least. Yet the boy remained sitting where he was, back straighter, head held high and proud, alert, but not moved an inch further from where he began. He glowered into the darkness.

 _“You aren't?”_ The Shadows drawled.

To this the boy snorted, “You hide when you are _afraid_.”

_“And you do not feel fear?”_

"No,” this nameless slave insisted, yet even as he sat there, nearly boring determined holes in the earth by the sheer force of his gaze, his thumbnail traced from worrying the crumbling edge of that half-eaten tart he still held, to scraping at a still-healing cut along the side of his finger. He had many such cuts, the Shadows now noted, long and thin and shallow. Like the marks left behind by a thousand little thorns…

With a sharp shake of his head, the boy stuffed another bite of tart into his mouth and turned his gaze back up and out, eying the dancers as they moved through their steps. “They have magic. They have _Friends._ Like you.” He said through a mouthful of pastry, “ _If_ I was afraid, that would not be so stupid.”

 _“And if_ **_you_ ** _had such friends, you would have even less reason to fear.”_

The boy glanced side-long back towards the shadows in between the undergrowth. “Maybe.”

_“Certainly, you would get caught less often swiping tarts from the King’s High Table.”_

The boy didn’t have even the decency to look embarrassed, only popping the last bite of tart into his mouth and shrugging. “ _He_ stole them first.”

 _“Of course he did.”_ The Darkness countered, _“And who do you think helped him? Who do you think is the friend of all thieves? Who do you think provides them with solace and sanctuary if not us?”_

“And that is what you will do for me?” the boy asked.

 _“Perhaps.”_ The Shadows said. _“What is it you_ **_want_ ** _us to do for you?”_

“I do not know.” The boy replied. A strange spark lit his eyes. “I haven’t thought of it yet.”

As sunlight dawned the next day, pale and watery through rain-gray clouds and ghostly drifts of fog -- so goes the story as it is told by old grandmothers and young governesses to their charges across the North -- It was Robin Goodfellow (though he was not called so yet, not in those days) who was sent by King Auberon to go fetch the boy. Down he went, through all of the twisting pathways and cob-web lined corridors of the Brugh until he came at last to the room where the fairies kept and cared for (inasmuch as it occurred to them to, and in as much as they remembered) their child captives. And they slept, huddled and curled up against one another, like a pile of puppies, wrapped in old skins for warmth. But the boy who had befriended the shadows was not to be seen. Robin Goodfellow looked, digging through the children and peering and searching through every inch and corner of that room, but he did not find him. He looked through every hallway and inside every chamber of the brugh that morning but he saw no sign of him, and it came to such a point that the King himself joined in on the hunt, summoning his hounds and his horses to him, and sweeping through all of the countryside within his Kingdom, his retinue in tow, in order to reclaim what he saw as rightfully his.

But still they found nothing.

And it was only then -- as nights passed and King Auberon and his Lords finally returned, as the horses and the hounds dropped half-dead from exhaustion before the gates of the Fairy King’s castle, as nearly all had given up on finding the child -- that he reappeared again. There he sat, quite contentedly in the middle of Auberon’s Great Hall,playing games with the shadow-shapes that slid across the walls, turning them into black ravens that he chased after or having them put on plays and stories for his amusement. 

When the boy turned to see Auberon there, his eyes turned wide, and already his form began to fade, his edges blurring and blending into the very shadows of the room again.

Yet the King knew more of magic and he reached out his hand to the fire lit in the grate until it flared so bright that the shadows were banished. The boy stood there under his gaze, bone-white and unable to turn his eyes away from the Fairy King, half out of fear and half from determined pride.

“We have searched this land, high and low to find you, thinking you had run away. And yet here you have been the whole time, making sport of the shadows in my home?” Auberon asked as he approached.

The boy nodded. 

“And who taught you such things?”

“Who could have?” The boy returned, holding his gaze stiff so that it would not turn away. 

Now, at this Auberon grew very cross indeed. To hear such impertinence from he had brought in and cared for, who he had searched for these past several days! “Well, it _cannot_ have been any of my court, for then I would know!”

“No, it was not them.” he boy agreed.

“Then _who?”_ Auberon demanded. “Did you teach _yourself?”_

And a thought occurred to the boy, seeing the interest the King took in this, in _him,_ now that he could do even this small magic. He did not say anything at all just then. Instead, he only shrugged.

And now Auberon’s mind was racing. What if the boy _had_ picked it up himself? What if his talent came just naturally from him? Or more yet, what if someone _else_ had taught him? If not from his own court then from elsewhere. Some enemy who wished to turn the boy against him? Or even so great a Personage as the Darkness itself?

In an instant, the expression on Auberon’s face changed, a smile like a cat’s curling it’s way across. If there is one thing a Fairy Lord knows it is when he has stumbled across something Very Important. And a Fairy Lord --if he wishes to continue being one, and remain breathing -- will always be quick to keep such Important Things under his own control, like jewels in his crown.

“And what clever tricks you have learned!” Auberon said, “But I know of far more things than merely Darkness, that I may teach you. Under me you shall become a great magician indeed.”

Now, the boy did not know quite _what_ he was expecting to hear. He knew Fairies, and had grown up amongst them his whole life. He thought the mystery of who had taught him would be distraction enough to save him, until Auberon had grown bored again, but this was entirely another story. He blinked at Auberon, “You will _teach_ me?” the boy repeated, slowly, and the Fairy King nodded.

“Of course! For I am nothing if not a generous man, and you seem a clever pupil. And all across Faerie you shall be famed for your skill. And, of course, I shall be too, for having taught you.”

And what could the boy do but agree with that?

As the years grew longer, it was quite as King Auberon had predicted. The boy did indeed grow to become a great magician, famed across not only Faerie, but throughout Heaven, Hell, and England as well. A king he became, and Three Kingdoms he won for himself. And all through his life he ever remembered those first steps in magic, that first spell he learned. And the Darkness ever was his friend.

But then he dissapeared, for years and years. And when a new magician came and sought to find him, to summon him back to England, and he sent the Darkness as his Envoy, the boy remained hidden even from it.


	2. Path

_“Hail King, and well met!”_

The words were written in the cobbles of the road,and spoken in the clop of his horse’s hooves flying across the way. The Old Road spoke of many things, and many things were written on it. It was all there, plain as day for those who knew how to read the bends and curves it took, the colors and patterns of the stones set into it, the cracks upon it’s surface, through which wild grasses and dandelions sprouted. In the soft pad of traveler’s feet atop its surface, it whispered of the leagues that stretched behind it, spoke gossip of the many others who had come before, and told travelers tales of the sights that still lie ahead. And now it called out to the boy and his companion.

When the entire world spoke, you learned to pick out the words addressed to you, and to hear _these_ words now, when all the rest of the world was concerned in it’s own matters surprised the young Starling. His horse he drew to a halt. Dark mane swirling in the wake of it’s own motion, the courser’s long, proud strides arced back to face the road. 

He did not glance about, searching for whoever it might be the Road called out to, indeed there was no sign at all of confusion or surprise on his face. Only a quirked brow, as he turned a look upon his companion. 

His name was Thomas of Dundale, this other young man. He had all of the long-limbed coltishness of youth about him. Eyes wide and expressive, _his_ movements hid nothing as his brows shot up as well, first glancing to the side and a bit over his shoulder --as though he expected to find someone there -- then back to the road. 

“Do you speak to _us?”_ Thomas asked. 

_“I speak to the King of the North, the Nameless Slave who is Lord of three realms.”_ The Road said, _“I speak to the child who’s home was stolen from him before he had come to know it, to the Raven that is now and once was a Starling.”_

Thomas’s gaze snapped to his young companion. Starling’s chin just lifted, his head canting only slightly to the side. “I hold no Kingdoms.” The younger boy said, a quiet murmur of a sentence, simple statement of fact with the edge of a question to it.

“ _Do Not Now, Will Do, Once Have, they are all the same to me. I know your step and I know_ **_you,_ ** _King. Upon my back you have been brought -- are being brought, will be brought -- into this land, and upon my back you will -- are, once did -- leave it again.”_

Thomas’s brows knit together, and a frown touched at his lips to hear such odd words spoken to his young friend. Strange riddles were not _uncommon_ , but strange riddles could lead to even stranger -- more dangerous -- places, and Faerie was already strange and dangerous enough a place as it stood.

“Come,” Thomas said, turning his own steed back towards the trees, before casting a look back to meet Starling’s eyes. He began trotting off, hoping the other boy would follow,“The fox we chase is still out there, and perhaps we can--”

Feet crushing through leaf-litter and undergrowth. Starling was not following. Rather, he’d slid off of his own horse’s back and was stepping nearer to the road. “It is already gone.” was all the boy said.

Thomas hadn’t realized how tightly he had been holding the reins in his hands until the leather started biting back. A low curse escaped him as he once more came to a halt, glancing back towards Starling.

And Starling wasn’t even looking at Thomas. Instead his eyes were fixed, narrowed in thought at the Road before him.

“And how can you say these things?” he asked.

 _“I am a Road, how can I not? I am Penlaw and I am --”_ here the Road said the name of a Castle in Faerie that is said to be held by Auberon. It’s name is long and twisting, such that most not raised in the speech of Faerie cannot pronounce it, let alone agree on proper spelling! -- _and I am every step in between all at once. I am the time between two places, I am what has come before and I am what is just beyond the next bend -- or perhaps I am all of that but reversed. But I am_ **_your_ ** _path, oh King, and this I know.”_

As he stood there listening to all of this, watching this exchange between the Road and his young friend, Thomas shifted in his place perched astride his horse’s back. Once more he glanced back to the hidden places and the long-reaching shadows of the trees behind them. He tugged at the strap of his quiver, bound around his chest and shoulders. Pressed his lips into a thin, hard line as he looked back at Starling again.

These were dangerous words, the Road spoke. They marked the boy out, made competition, a _threat,_ out of Starling for any Sidhe Lord or Lady who might hear. And hear they would, for as desolate and silent as that wood seemed _now,_ word had a way of traveling in Faerie. And for all that Starling acted, all that he might do with that clever mind and all he might have learned from Auberon, at the heart of it, he was still a boy.

And so, _someone_ had to look out for him, especially if he was too proud to do so himself. 

“ _Starling!”_ Thomas hissed again, and now as the boy turned around to look at him once more the irritation was plainly drawn there across his face. 

There was a waiting silence, and almost a challenge in Starling’s eyes for him to go on. Any why shouldn't there be? _These_ were matters of destiny being discussed, after all.

The boy was five years younger than himself, he should not be stirring up memories of Thomas’s childhood, of interrupting his father while the adults were talking!

“You are no king yet, do not look at me so.” 

The words did nothing to soften Starling’s expression. Silent as he remained, that look was as good as an argument in itself.

God’s _bloody_ wounds did he have to be so stubborn?

There would be no turning Starling aside once he’d gotten an idea in his head however, fate or no. And now that fate _was_ woven into such matters...

Thomas sighed. 

“Come, _please._ There will be time enough to _be_ a King, if it is the way things are meant to be. And if this is your Road, then you will return to it. But today, please, just for _today,_ we hunt together. Can that not be enough for now?”

Starling frowned, and for a moment he hesitated, his gaze rolling back behind him to the road that stretched on. Perhaps he had expected something different. It did not matter. Just at that moment, before anything more could be said, there was a sharp gekkering within the trees. . And Starling looked up.With the whimsicality that seemed so inherit to Fairy folk, that suddenness that seemed almost some kind of spell in itself to Thomas, the younger boy caught Thomas’s eye and something almost resembling a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

“Come then,” He said, “As you say, I am no king yet.”

And with those words, he pulled himself back up onto his horse and plunged off into the trees. Thomas only shook his head, an almost fond smirk touching at his lips even as he rolled his eyes, before he kneeing his horse onward and following Starling.

When he returned to that road he was indeed a King, ruler of one realm and soon-to-be conqueror of another. Historians and scholars, they may tell you the tale of what happened after and have done so far better than I ever could. Yet that is not the story I am here to tell. He returned to that road many times as the years passed by, and so other Magicians followed. He built his own Roads that took him to more places, farther away then the old Road could even dream. But still the King ever returned.

And then, there was a bend in the road.

A turning point, where suddenly, the king was not arriving in Faerie from _England,_ but rather, traveling to England and Elsewhere from _Faerie._ He came only sporadically -- There had never _truly_ been any predicting the King’s movements and now even less so. And he always traveled alone. Nevertheless, The Road was not forgotten, and the King still walked upon it.

Yet there came a day when a voice called out to the Road. A man, a Magician, who wished to find the King. A Magician who asked the Road to lead the King to him. But the King was not walking upon the Road that night, and not once did he step foot upon it. Thus the Road could do nothing, and the King never came.


	3. Handsel

It was not in his habit to go about in the middle of the night, trudging over rough, forgotten country roads (that was to say, when there _were_ any roads about to _begin with_ ) with only a lantern, a map and a vague idea to guide him. That first should be made clear, above all other things. Gilbert Norrell was, upon the whole, an _entirely_ respectable young man. There were times, however, when in order to advance the greater knowledge of mankind, the question of one’s respectability must be put aside. (Later in his life he would deny, vehemently, ever being a man _capable_ of such thoughts -- and the idea that he had ever been one was never something to have crossed the minds of those who had met him anyway.)

It was cold. Not the bone-gnawing cold of deep winter, the sort that numbed one’s fingers and made the tips of his ears throb just to think of, but instead that damp chill that early spring often carries about with it. It made his nose run, and for possibly the thousandth time that night, Gilbert took out his handkerchief. The mud (for of course there was mud, there was _always_ mud, wasn’t there?) sucked at his feet, and he stumbled over the rutted, pathless place, relying more on his own young man’s faith in the idea that he was _right_ as much as anything else to bring him to the spot.

He would be glad when this was done, when the journey back home was ended, and once more he was back in the warmth and light of his Uncle’s --

Wait. _No._

If he were successful he would be somewhere far better. Somewhere where he would be _respected,_ not seen as a madman or a vagabond or a fool. And that was reason enough for him to keep going. 

The place was difficult to find if you did not know what you were looking for. It was difficult to find if you _did_ know what you were looking for, and were searching in full daylight (which Gilbert was most assuredly _not)._ Really, as he groped through the grasping shadow-shapes of he trees crowding all about him, plucking and snagging at his coat and wig he was beginning to rethink this entire venture --or atleast beginning to consider returning to the inn he was staying at, settling himself in for the night with a hot cup of tea, and coming back in the morning when he could _see._ Soabsorbed was he in this pleasant thought -- or rather it should be said, the fact that he was not currently _experiencing_ the pleasantness of this thought right then -- that he suddenly found himself lurching forward, the ground flying out from beneath his feet before the inevitable crash. Earth and undergrowth scraped against his hands and knees, his mouth filled with loam. A long groan escaped the young man, and slowly, shakily, _painfully_ , he pushed himself to his knees once more.

Every inch of him was throbbing. Gilbert cast a glance back over his shoulder, and found himself glowering at a particularly twisted tree root that had the temerity to be growing at just the right angle and placement to have tripped him. 

With an affronted snort, Gilbert snatched his gaze away, giving his head a sharp shake as he rose back to his feet and dusted himself off. 

As he snatched up his lantern, the young man finally saw what it was that stood before him, and in that moment, it seemed all of the tension, all of the nervous energy, all of his frustration and out-of-place-ness left him at once. A new sense of purpose had dawned in his stance and he stood a bit straighter, held his ground a bit more firmly, swinging his pack down from his shoulders and pulling out a candle and a silver basin.

Gilbert lowered himself right back to the ground, setting the basin before him and pouring water from a flask into it. He lit the candle, and there, sitting on a road of cracked cobbles, half-reclaimed by the forest and cutting through an unruly hedge, he began his work.

The King had always been there, of course. As much as the darkness had always been there, or the stars. Gilbert remembered the first time he had learned of Dr. Martin Pale, sitting there in the quiet of his Uncle’s library, behind a wall of books piled high enough to hide his face from view. He remembered opening Belasis’ _Instructions_ for the first time, and reading about Thomas Godbless’ gift to the Raven King. But the King _himself_? That was like asking him about the first time he’d learned what _rain_ was, or when he’d discovered magic was no longer done in England. 

As for that last question, he could more rightly tell you when he’d begun to question why that must be so. Especially when he had proven himself a rather capable magician. 

It had been an accident when first he’d discovered the tallent. Again, another day spent in his Uncle’s library, a pile of books scattered about him. Pen and ink to one side, so foolishly, _carelessly_ placed too near. A stray movement of his arm had sent the ink well tumbling, pouring wet and black over the open pages of that copy of _The_ _Instructions,_ just as Godbless arrived late to the King’s celebrations. He didn't know how he’d done it. His breath had just caught. The world had just _stopped._

 _No,_ Gilbert remembered thinking, _No, no, no,no,no…._ The silent wish to go back to undo the last few moments of time.

And then, a change came over the room, one he couldn’t quite explain. It was as though all of the books on their shelves had been taken out and rearranged in an instant. And the ink retreated, flowing back _off_ of the paper and retreating back into it’s well, which righted itself as though nothing had happened at all.

For a moment, Gilbert could only stare.

When he came back to himself, of course his first concern was to banish the inkwell to the other side of the room entirely. He told no one about the magic, but from there on he threw himself into his studies.

Magic had been gone for hundreds of years. The King had been gone for hundreds of years. And here Gilbert stood, England’s first Magician in all of that time. 

He couldn’t have told you when it was he first conceived of the idea, to find the King himself. Only that each time he’d heard passing gossip about street-magicians in their yellow-curtained tents, or that every time a well meaning bookseller would catch the title of his latest purchase and sigh wistfully about _real_ magic no longer being done, then the conviction would only grow stronger.

_“I name the darkness that surrounds me, that has ever been friend and ally to the Raven King as my Envoy and ask that it seek him out.”_

He had researched the question of how to do so for weeks. Months? Perhaps years --since first he had begun his studies in earnest -- if he were to tell the truth. He had feared the Raven King as a child, avoiding the darkness where he was said to dwell, sliding deep and buried under his blankets at night that he might stay safe. 

Yet in reading about magic, the King was impossible to ignore. 

He was the greatest of all English Magicians, after all. The _First_ of all English Magicians, was it any surprise? He was the root of it all, connected to it all and yet still so strangely separate from it. Separate, somehow, from all of those that surrounded him.

Yes, perhaps it was just part of the nature of the calling, Gilbert supposed.

Isolation, that was.

In any case, though books could teach him so much, to be apprentice to a real Magician...oh he could just imagine the things he could learn _then._ Perhapsthat was where the plans began to form. Not seriously at first, but when it began to look like he might have discovered a way…

_“I name this Road, the Road said to be he one walked by the Raven King when he came first to England, as my Path, and ask that it lead the King to me.”_

Gilbert’s hand hovered just over the candle now.

_“And I name as Handsel, Myself. The First True Magician in three hundred years of English history, to act as servant and apprentice to you, oh King, if you Arrive and show yourself before me. At the Dousing of this candle I enact this summoning!"_

Gilbert pinched the candle out. The forest fell to silence, _waiting_ , it almost seemed to him.

Yet no one came. 

He waited all night, fell asleep at some point and only realized it when he found himself blinking blearily at the sky, his bones aching and his mouth coated in a thick film.

Gilbert pushed himself up, first to his elbows, and then slowly into a sitting position, glancing about, as if looking for any sign that some other life had been here in the passage of the night.

The wind howled through the trees, a groaning, empty sound without any newly budded leaves to clatter against themselves. 

No one had come.


	4. Epilogue

The King watched from the shadows of the library’s shelves unseen. The boy had returned home, even more silent, more retireing than usual. Did the King know what the boy had tried? Perhaps. No Envoy had come to him. It was true, that only meant no envoy had _found_ him. He had watched this boy, known him from the beginning. From _before_ the beginning. It was not difficult to imagine the attempt would come, eventually.

He would not be the first foolish or arrogant enough to have tried.

A change had taken place in the young man. It was difficult to see, hunched over his books as he now was, but it was there. In the eyes and the leagues-long stare they’d gotten. The way they’d suddenly focus and narrow now when his eyes came across certain lines in the text. Every so often there would be a soft noise of disgust. Eventually the boy just snapped the book shut and pushed it aside, finding himself a new one.

The king blew a soft sigh past his lips, shaking his head. He knew this was necessary, and he knew what would come of this.

Still. He _had_ watched the boy, and he knew him well. Had seen his caution and his awareness of the dangers he could face in learning, yet also a willingness to learn despite that. A Certain stubbornness. And that draw, towards things secretive and subtle, what the effects of a turn here, a step there could do…

It reminded the King...well. It did not matter of what or who. He had seen many things in his life after all, had known many people. Still, perhaps one day this boy would actually make a tolerable magician indeed. 

In the meanwhile, however, the King’s business here was done for now. He turned to go, before pausing, a faint, thoughtful look crossing his features. He lifted up his hand...

Across the room, a book fell from the stack piled beside Gilbert. He felt it in the air, could taste it, like morning on some far distant mountainside. _Magic_. Instinctively the young man’s eyes snapped back behind him, searching in the shadows….

No one was there.

Muttering to himself, Gilbert shook his head, sliding from his chair to pick up the fallen book. As he did, he could not help but find himself reading the page that had fallen open.

_“De Chepe’s spell for a Labyrinth…”_

Intrigued, Gilbert Norrell continued to read. 


End file.
